For me this is subdivided, and always has been. There is something like an aesthetic ideal. Love is blind though they say, and with me that's surely the case to some degree. I have friends who are very close to my aesthetic ideal, and some who totally are not, but it doesn't matter, not even in the early stages of friendship. For relationships it's similar for me -- I have no pattern.

Romantic attraction is more subtle. Physical appearance is the prerequisite, I think. But I haven't been romantically attracted to many people so I can't conclude. But it seems to me that people are reluctant to admit the importance of looks in attraction.

Well we derive certain features from looks. People always have done this, and it had a very infamous peak in the phrenology used by the Nazi regime. The idea was to derive some character traits from certain features. Some aesthetics seem to persist, and others seem to be up for discussion and a matter of acquired or cultural taste.

In general, a symmetric face is perceived as beautiful, of course; obviously it is related with the genome. But then, total symmetry is boring. Let me show you... :

This would be PJ's face. The middle is the unaltered one, left and right I mirrored one side each, you can easily see which one.

To avoid the accusation that I'd pick on PJ in any way: This is a normal face mirrored the same way. Mine. Hilarious. (The flashlight does weird things to my nose in this picture, and also, I should definitely go to sleep. )

Why is it that the left side of my face (the picture on the far right) looks weirder than the other? Just btw the 2xleft picture of PJ also looks the strangest. Any theories? Or can you check with pictures of your own? I'd be curious to know.